Color of Blood(107)

Back at the hotel he checked for the package, but it had not arrived. He decided to stay in his hotel room as much as possible to avoid being spotted. He parked the LandCruiser at another hotel five blocks away and rented another car, a Holden sedan. If they were still looking for him and had found the LandCruiser, they’d canvas the other hotel. At least that was his thinking.

That afternoon, sitting in his hotel room looking at the busy, but strangely sterile port in front of him, Dennis could barely make out a human figure on the waterfront. From his window he could see ships stacked up at anchor outside the harbor, long snake-like trains parked near a terminal, huge cranes and conveyor belts—but virtually no humans. And what humans he did see through his binoculars were Lilliputians with tiny hard hats standing next to giant machines of commerce. He found the environment depressing and devoid of life.

Ants, he thought. They were nothing but ants crawling over the desert landscape. Stupid, brainless ants.

That was his signal that he was swaying into a dark period. He sat on his bed and felt a flash of anxiety, and then dread: or was it dread, then anxiety? He was never sure what came first.

Dennis had a sudden impulse to use his disposable mobile phone to call Judy, but he knew that was a bad idea. She needed protection, not more trouble.

I need the frigging package, he thought. I need it now so I can get the hell out of this place.

***

“Oh God, Cilla, I have no idea what love is,” Judy said. “Please!”

“I’m just suggesting that maybe you’re in love with him, that’s all,” Cilla said.

Judy, Cilla, Sarah, and a fourth woman, Emily, were having dinner at O’Reilly’s, an Irish pub on Hay Street in Perth.

“I’ll tell you what love is,” Sarah said, holding her two hands about eight inches apart. “It’s about this bloody long.”

The group burst out in laughter, and Judy was just as happy to have the attention move from her.

“I’m being serious,” Cilla said, taking a sip of her wine. “Maybe you’re just in love with this crazy Yank.”

“Well, regardless of Sarah’s definition of love,” Judy said, laughing, “I don’t think that’s what I’m talking about. Can’t you just miss someone and not be in love? Why does it always have to be either love or not love? Life isn’t always so perfectly binary, is it?”

“Where did you say he was now?” Sarah asked.

“He’s up north on business, and then he’ll head back to the States,” Judy said.

“Why don’t you just appear at his house unannounced?” Cilla said. “Have you thought about that? And if it’s not love, then it’s profound like. And you don’t need any more motivation than that.”

They laughed again.

“But what if he’s married and has been lying to you all this time?” Sarah said. “I mean it wouldn’t be the first time in Western civilization that a man lied to a woman to get into her britches.”

“Yes, I’ve thought of that, which is why I’m not going anywhere,” Judy said. “Besides, as you pointed out last time we had dinner, he probably has at least two families.”

The group burst out in laughter again, and Judy took a huge gulp of her frosty sauvignon blanc.

***

The phone in his room rang.

“Mr. Cunningham?”

“Yes.”

“Your package has arrived. Should we send it up?”

“Yes, please. Hey, is there a hardware store here in Port Hedland?”

“Of course; I can write up directions for you.”

“That would be great, thanks.”

The sun was setting when Dennis had finished spray-painting the small device. He had purchased a can of flat red paint and had placed newspapers down on his narrow balcony to protect the cement floor.

He looked out onto the port, lit up like a massive baseball park. In an hour or so he would try to pull off this stunt; it was the last piece of this strange game that would lead him to the prize, or what he hoped was the prize.

***

He slowed down on the highway leading to the container port and checked his rearview mirror. At 10:00 p.m. it seemed he was the only driver on that lonely stretch of highway.

He switched off his headlights and turned slowly off the road into desert scrubland surrounding the port. Dennis was careful to avoid hitting the brake pedal—they’d shine like a beacon in the night landscape—as he meandered like a Galapagos turtle. He estimated that he needed to drive about half a mile or more to intersect the fence protecting the port. The port’s industrial lighting painted the area in an artificial orange wash.

It seemed odd to him that the port authority would build a ten-foot galvanized wire fence around the hundred-acre, mostly empty facility.

Perhaps they needed to keep the roos out, he thought, and other primitive mammals. Like me.

After nearly thirty minutes of driving through the uneven desert scrub, Dennis slowed to a stop next to the fence. In front of him, on the other side of the fence, lay a discarded and damaged shipping container.

The abandoned container offered Dennis an obstruction to protect the car from the prying eyes of the port authorities and the inhabitants of the dusty white Suburban. He had disabled the interior light of the car so that when he opened the door, it did not light up. Out of the car, he used his binoculars to find the Suburban. It was about four hundred yards away across a stretch of desert and looked like it had not moved.